2021年夏天，我走访了加拿大多伦多一处无家可归者聚集的公园，并与其中一位居民交谈。他住在崭新摩天大楼的阴影下，栖身于帐篷之中，已经无家可归约五年时间。谈话中他转过身来，指着天际线上的一台起重机说道：“这些楼是给谁建的？肯定不是给我这种人。”他说得没错。他的经历折射出全世界普通民众的共同感受：人们越来越确信，现有的住房体系早已不再服务于他们的需求。他所指出的问题不仅仅是住房危机，更是民主制度的危机。
In the summer of 2021, I visited a homeless community in a park in Toronto, Canada, and spoke to one of the residents. He was living in a tent in the shadow of brand new skyscrapers, and had been homeless for about five years. At one point he swivelled around, pointed up at a crane on the skyline, and said: “Who are they building those for? Definitely not for me.”He was right. And he captured something experienced by ordinary people around the world: the growing conviction that the housing system is no longer tethered to their needs. What he was pointing at is not just a housing crisis. It is a crisis of democracy.
民主制度本应保障所有人的居住条件都能由全体民众共同决定，无论其社会地位如何。然而如今，住房相关的决策早已被系统性地从民主管控中剥离，转交给了私募股权公司、养老基金以及房地产投资信托基金等金融资本势力。这些势力与政府、银行密切勾结，使得房价与普通民众的收入水平彻底脱钩，把我们的住房变成了富有的投资者们随意把玩的“玩具”。我将这种利益联盟称为“住房产业集团”。
Democracy promises that our living conditions are shaped by all of us, regardless of our station in life. Yet decisions about housing have been systematically removed from democratic control and handed to financial actors such as private equity firms, pension funds and real-estate investment trusts. Working hand in hand with governments and banks, these actors have decoupled the price of housing from what ordinary people earn. They`ve transformed our homes into a toy for wealthy investors. I call this alliance Housing Inc.
那些引发并从住房危机中牟利的金融巨头们拥有普通民众根本无法企及的资源与手段：他们雇佣大批游说人员以阻挠租金管制法规的出台；他们为各类政治竞选活动提供资金支持；他们频繁出入政府要职。正是这些势力掌控着所有关键决策的制定过程。
The tools available to the large financial actors driving and profiting from the housing crisis are not available to the rest of us. They hire armies of lobbyists to squash rent-control laws. They fund political campaigns. They rotate in and out of government positions. They are in the rooms and hallways where decisions are made.
即使是试图对抗金融部门在住房领域日益增长影响力的政府，也面临着巨大压力。在哥本哈根，私募股权巨头黑石集团在全市购买了公寓楼、进行了翻新，并且在某些情况下将新租户的租金翻倍后，丹麦议会通过了立法，禁止新业主在五年内对翻新后的公寓提高租金。虽然这部通常被称为“黑石法”的措施很勇敢，但它比政府最初想要的要弱。当时的丹麦住房部长卡雷·迪布瓦德曾提出冻结租金十年。面对房东和养老基金的愤怒，且需要右翼政党的支持才能通过该法案，他将期限缩短至五年。
Even governments trying to fight the growing influence of the financial sector in housing face intense pressure. In Copenhagen, after the private equity giant Blackstone bought up apartment blocks across the city, renovated them and, in some cases, doubled the rent for new tenants, the Danish parliament passed legislation barring new owners from raising rents on renovated apartments for five years. While this “Blackstone law”, as it was commonly called, was a brave measure, it was weaker than the government had wanted. Kaare Dybvad, then Denmark`s housing minister, had proposed a 10-year freeze. Faced with fury from landlords and pension funds, and needing rightwing party votes to pass it, he cut it to five.
普通租户、无家可归者、被排除在住房市场之外的年轻人——他们拥有什么？他们有一票。仅此而已。
The average tenant, the person experiencing homelessness, the young person locked out of the housing market – what do they have? They have a vote. That is all.
而这一票所带来的改变，远不及我们所承诺的。正如经济学家亚尼斯·瓦鲁法基斯所主张的，选举不再决定经济政策。左翼和右翼的政府更迭更替，无论谁掌权，租金仍在上涨，因为经济模式始终保持不变：资金总是流向回报最高的地方，也就是说流向房地产等非生产性资产，而远离那些真正能够解决住房问题的公共投资。我们可以更换政府。但看来，我们无法改变他们所共同遵循的经济政策。
And the vote changes less than we are promised. As the economist Yanis Varoufakis has argued, elections no longer determine economic policy. Governments of the left and the right come and go, and regardless of who is in power, rents keep rising, because the economic model always stays the same: money flows to wherever the returns are highest, which means into unproductive assets such as real estate, and away from the public investment that would actually house people. We can change our governments. We cannot, it seems, change the economic policies they all adhere to.
是谁决定金融公司可以把我们的住房当作投资品的？不是公众。考虑一下将抵押贷款打包成证券的做法——这为2008年金融危机埋下了伏笔；或者在超过40个司法管辖区中，让房地产投资信托免征企业所得税的决定。这些决策都是在公众视线之外进行的，由政府和金融行为者共同塑造，却没有任何公众辩论。
Who decided that financial firms could use our homes as investments? Not the public. Consider the bundling of mortgages into securities, which laid the groundwork for the 2008 financial crisis, or the decision in more than 40 jurisdictions to exempt real-estate investment trusts from corporate income tax. Both happened out of public view, shaped by governments and financial actors, with no public debate.
其他类型的住房投资也发生了同样的事情。以雅典的短租房为例。民主虽然可能诞生在那里，但它并不总是蓬勃发展。全球金融危机之后，希腊人在违背意愿的情况下承受了残酷的紧缩措施。房产价值崩溃，工资下降，普通家庭难以维持生计。对许多房主来说，通过Airbnb等短租平台将房屋租给游客成了一条生命线——一种从已经失去大部分价值的资产中产生收入的方式。
The same thing happens with other kinds of housing investment. Take short-term rentals in Athens. While democracy may have been born there, it hasn`t always thrived. After the global financial crisis, Greeks were held to brutal austerity measures against their will. Property values collapsed, wages fell and ordinary families struggled to make ends meet. For many property owners, renting to tourists through short-let platforms such as Airbnb became a lifeline – a way to generate income from an asset that had lost most of its value.
但起初作为家庭生存策略的做法，后来成了外国买家的投资策略。希腊政府于2013年推出了“黄金签证”计划，向购买希腊房产的任何外国人提供居留权。数千人这样做了——不是为了住在那里，而是为了将公寓改造成短租房，把希腊的旅游业当作一项好投资来获利。随着外国资本涌入，长期住房变得更加稀缺，租金飙升，埃克萨尔希亚（Exarchia）和库卡基（Koukaki）等社区变得面目全非。雅典人进行了抗议，而政府则通过派遣防暴警察和压制异见来为自己的决定辩护。
But what began as a survival strategy for families became an investment strategy for foreign buyers. The government introduced a “golden visa” programme in 2013, offering residency to any foreigner who bought Greek property. Thousands did – not to live there, but to convert apartments into short-term rentals, banking on Greece`s tourism industry as a good investment. As foreign capital flooded in, long-term housing became scarcer, rents spiked and neighbourhoods such as Exarchia and Koukaki began to change beyond recognition. Athenians protested and their government responded by sending in the riot police and steamrollering dissent to defend its decisions.
对于受住房危机影响最严重的人来说，真正能参与公民事务的机会往往被削弱、不足或遥不可及。公开谈论糟糕居住条件的租客面临被驱逐的风险，并且他们找下一个住所时需要房东的推荐信。那些为了支付房租而身兼数职的人没有时间去参加市议会会议，也没有时间填写那些通往未知结果的调查问卷。当人们没有途径参与有关自身住房的决策时，他们会感到被政府抛弃。这就造成了一个完全适合右翼民粹主义来填补的真空。
Whats on offer in terms of genuine civic engagement for the people most affected by the housing crisis tends to be defanged, inadequate or inaccessible. Tenants who speak out about poor conditions risk eviction, and they need landlord references for their next place. People holding down multiple jobs just to pay their rent dont have time for city council meetings, or surveys and questionnaires that lead nowhere. When people have no means to participate in decisions about their own housing, they feel abandoned by government. This creates a vacuum that rightwing populism is perfectly designed to fill.
这让我们回到民主的承诺。当一个居住地不再由人及其需求来治理，而是由金融公司和利润决定，把人赶出家园、逼上街头时，它还能算是民主吗？世界各地的人们正把这个问题推到台前。
Which brings us back to democracy`s promise. Can it be a democracy when a place to live is governed not by human beings and their needs but by financial firms and profit, pricing people out of their homes and onto the streets? Around the world, people are forcing that question into the open.
在马德里，87岁的玛丽亚·德尔·卡门·阿巴斯卡尔（更广为人知的是玛丽卡门）在同一套公寓里住了71年，直到拥有该公寓的投资公司要求她每月支付2650欧元（约合2280英镑），而非之前的500欧元。9月23日，在之前的几次尝试被阻挡后，警方清空了她邻居们聚集的门口，她被驱逐出租。当晚，数千人走上马德里街头。几天之内，抗议人数达到数万，抗议营地占领了普埃塔德尔索尔广场，示威活动蔓延至全国各地。
In Madrid, 87-year-old María del Carmen Abascal (better known as Maricarmen) had lived in the same flat for 71 years when the investment firm that owns it demanded she pay €2,650 (£2,280) a month instead of €500. On 23 September, after earlier attempts had been blocked, police cleared hundreds of her neighbours from the doorway and she was evicted. That evening, thousands took to the streets of Madrid. Within days there were tens of thousands, a protest camp had filled the Puerta del Sol square, and demonstrations had spread to cities across the country.
驱逐事件发生六天后，西班牙政府通过紧急法令，延长租赁合同并保护弱势租户免遭驱逐。人们称之为“玛丽卡门法令”。三天后，议会否决了该法令。右翼政党投了反对票，其中一个政党称自动续租是“对财产权的侵占”。玛丽卡门不久后去世。
Six days after the eviction, the Spanish government passed emergency decrees extending rental contracts and shielding vulnerable tenants from eviction. People called it the “Maricarmen decree”. Three days later, parliament struck it down. The parties of the right had voted against it, one of them calling automatic lease renewal an “expropriation of property rights”. Maricarmen passed away not long after.
2021年，在柏林，超过一百万人——即有效票的59.1%——支持一项公投，旨在将该市最大企业房东所拥有的住房纳入公有制。该公投结果不具约束力，而连续的政府一直置之不理。于是，柏林人只能使用他们手头唯一的工具，尽管它粗糙无比。今年9月20日，曾承诺落实该公投的左翼党（Die Linke）赢得了州议会选举，并首次成为该市议会中最大的政党。
In Berlin in 2021, more than one million people – 59.1% of valid votes – backed a referendum to take the homes owned by the citys largest corporate landlords into public ownership. The result was non-binding, and successive governments have ignored it. So Berliners used the one tool they had, blunt as it was. On 20 September this year, Die Linke, which had campaigned on the promise to carry out the referendum, won the state elections and became the largest party in the citys parliament for the first time.
次日，就在政府尚未组建之前，德国总理弗里德里希·默茨宣布，他将加快推进一部全国性法律，以禁止所谓的“征用”住房。柏林人曾就住房经济政策的变革进行投票，而总理随后明确表示，这不属于他们来决定。
One day later, before a government had even been formed, Germany`s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, announced that he would fast-track a national law banning the “expropriation” of housing. Berliners had voted for a change in economic policy on housing, and the chancellor then made it clear that this was not theirs to decide.
但该运动早已明白，不能依赖民主的空洞承诺。去年，他们自行起草了一部征用法，以便在有意愿的政府上台时得以通过——或者，如果那样行不通，则将其提交第二次具有约束力的公投。正如他们自己所说：“”——我们必须亲自动手做一切事情。这就是重夺民主所需的付出。
But the movement had known better than to rely on the broken promise of democracy. Last year, it wrote an expropriation law itself, so that it could be passed by a willing government – or, failing that, put to a second, binding vote. In its own words: “” – we have to do everything ourselves. That is what it takes to reclaim democracy.
莱拉尼·法哈是2026年CBC马西讲座的讲者。本文基于她的新作：《住房公司：全球接管与我们争取家园的斗争》。她曾任联合国适当住房问题特别报告员，现为国际人权组织“转变”（The Shift）的全球总监。
Leilani Farha is the 2026 CBC Massey lecturer. This piece is based on her new book: Housing Inc.: A Global Takeover and Our Fight for Home. She is the former UN special rapporteur on adequate housing and the global director of the international human rights organisation, The Shift